Friday 16 May 2014

DOGGERLAND


 



I belong to a study group run by Newcastle University Archaelogy Department and yesterday we visited the highest point of Doggerland; namely Low Hauxley on the north Northumberland coast.
Before the ice caps melted and created what we now know as the North Sea, you could walk from say Brussels across Doggerland, to Newcastle. Doggerland was what we now call Dogger Bank, once famous fishing grounds and not actually all that deep below the surface [on average less than 100 meters]. This all happened much more recently than people realise and Neolithic tools caught up in trawler nets show that Dogger Bank was an inhabited landmass as recently as 6000BC. Then, the rising sea slowly flooded the land and the inhabitants had to migrate.
The significance of Low Hauxley is that there are Cists and burials there. From the point of view of the people living on Doggerland, Low Hauxley would have looked like a mountain; an ideal place to bury a chieftain.
 

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